Online gaming and gambling has become an increasingly popular form of entertainment in recent times. Online gaming infrastructures have developed that make use of large networks such as the Internet to connect players together from diverse geographic locations, sometimes around the globe. Connecting to an online gaming site can allow an individual to compete in approximately real-time against other players with whom he would never otherwise come into contact, at arbitrary times of day, from the comfort of his own home or office computer, without having to physically travel to a casino or other brick-and-mortar gaming site.
One of the earliest and most popular wagering games to be played online is poker, which includes a number of variants, such as Texas hold'em, Omaha, Seven-card stud, Razz, HORSE, and others. In a traditional poker card game, players sit together at a table and compete to collect winning combinations of cards. At the beginning of each “hand” of the game, typically one or more of the players are required to place an initial bet of some amount (the “blind” or “ante”), and then cards are dealt to the players. Players take turns betting on the strength of the cards that each of them holds (also called the player's “hand” of cards), placing bets in the form of money, “chips” (game betting pieces representing units of value), or other items of value into a “pot” that will be collected by the winner of the hand. In many poker games, there are multiple rounds of betting, separated by periods during which additional cards may be dealt and/or traded. In each round of betting, a player at his turn may either bet or fold (leave the hand and forfeit his contributions to the pot up to that point). After the final betting round, if multiple players remain without folding, then at least some of their hands of cards are revealed, and the player with the strongest hand (as defined by the game rules) wins the pot. Or, if all players but one have folded, then the remaining player may take the pot, possibly without showing his hand of cards.
In a poker cash game, hands of poker are played where the player's chips represent cash and players are relatively free to join or leave a game as they wish. Betting may be structured such that only certain values of cash bets are allowed at each betting opportunity within a hand, or may be unstructured (so-called “no limit” play) such that a player may bet any number of chips, including all of them, when a betting opportunity arises as defined by the rules of the poker game being played.
In a poker tournament, multiple hands of poker are played in sequence, and the winner of the tournament is typically the player who succeeds in winning all of the chips at play in the tournament (i.e., all of the other players' chips, plus his own starting chips). To participate in the tournament, each player typically pays a fixed buy-in amount and is given a fixed starting number of chips to play with. The chips in a tournament therefore do not represent a cash amount, but rather are a currency within the tournament used to decide who wins and loses the tournament. The buy-ins form a prize pool from which the tournament's winnings are drawn. If there are a large number of players in the tournament, they may begin the tournament divided into multiple tables of players, which may be consolidated into fewer numbers of tables as individual players are eliminated from play. All players other than the winner typically become eliminated at some point during the tournament, by losing all of their chips. Once the tournament has been won, in some cases the winner may be awarded all of the prize money. In other cases, the winner may be awarded the largest portion of the prize money, and one or more other players may be awarded smaller portions based on when they were eliminated from the tournament (e.g., the last player to be eliminated may be awarded the next-largest portion of the prize money, etc.).
Online poker tournaments are typically hosted by a server, such as a web server, to which players from potentially anywhere in the world can connect to play together as if they were in the same room. Each player typically participates in the tournament via a client device (such as a personal computer) that communicates with the server via a network such as the Internet. The server manages and continually updates a database storing the information used in running the online poker tournament, such as user profiles, player chip amounts, player table assignments, player hands, player bets, game cards, and the like. The server transmits information to and receives corresponding information from the client devices in data transmissions via the network. The server device processes information it receives, such as new user actions or user profile changes, updates the database as to the current game state in as close to real-time as possible, and transmits continuously updating graphics and messages to the client devices to maintain on each client device a real-time display of the virtual poker tournament in progress.